Yahoo is the latest company to encrypt all he data that goes through its data centers, last month Google announced that Gmail data between its data centers is encrypted. In November last year Yahoo revealed plans for encryption of data center traffic. Yahoo has switched to HTTPS as default protocol for Yahoo mail uses this January. Yahoo also encrypts other Yahoo properties like Yahoo News, Sports and Finance.
The encryption of data between data centers comes as a reaction to the NSA spying on users, Yahoo is one of the company that is fighting for the NSA reforms. Google is encrypting its traffic amid concerns of NSA spying on its users. Tech companies are following this route since the NSA surveillance information came out. All the search queries that run on Yahoo home page and other Yahoo properties are also encrypted as well.

Hundreds of Yahoos have been working around the clock over the last several months to provide a more secure experience for our users and we want to do even more moving forward. Our goal is to encrypt our entire platform for all users at all time, by default.One of our biggest areas of focus in the coming months is to work with and encourage thousands of our partners across all of Yahoo’s hundreds of global properties to make sure that any data that is running on our network is secure. Our broader mission is to not only make Yahoo secure, but improve the security of the overall web ecosystem.

In addition to moving all Yahoo properties to encryption Yahoo says they will implement additional security measures such as HSTS, Perfect Forward Secrecy and Certificate Transparency in the coming months. Yahoo is not stopping with this, according to a blog post they will implement encryption on Yahoo Messenger as well, there is no time frame given for this but we can expect the same in the coming months.